Note: Indie Author Magazine, Indie Author Training, and our other sister sites maintain a neutral stance on artificial intelligence. In our coverage, we seek to provide an objective, informative take on the technology, and we encourage authors to make decisions about whether to use AI platforms based on their personal values and what’s best for their business.
In April, Draft2Digital and Barnes & Noble Press garnered controversy after they announced changes to their policies—including new account fees, pricing limitations, and restrictions on the number of titles allowed per account—for independent authors and publishers in the same week. Both companies attributed the changes, at least in part, to a flood of AI-generated spam content being published on the platforms.
Nicole Schroeder
The problematic titles, which Draft2Digital CEO Kris Austin calls “book spam,” are different from titles authors create using generative AI tools. Often, the books flagged by the platforms are nonfiction titles that have been entirely generated and can include false and potentially dangerous information.
But Barnes & Noble and Draft2Digital aren’t the only platforms struggling with AI spam. Last month, Rakuten Kobo President and CEO Michael Tamblyn shared an article in Publishing Perspectives about his own platform’s struggle with filtering new titles in the age of generative AI. “Last year, we rejected 45% of the self-published books that were submitted—literally hundreds of thousands of books—and most of those rejections were because, best we could tell, the books were generated with AI,” he wrote.
In the article, Tamblyn went on to explain the complexities of the decision Kobo faced—and still faces—regarding AI use for books published on the platform. Although the company has wrestled with a significant uptick in the number of poor-quality books being submitted to Kobo, Tamblyn says the company also recognizes that many authors and publishers today use AI tools somewhere in their creation process. Creating a 0% AI policy would “likely end up disqualifying many books that deserve to be read,” he wrote. Similarly, AI detectors are so far unreliable, and as programs become more advanced, identifying AI-generated content from human-written work becomes more difficult.
So what is the solution? Kobo, like the other distribution companies facing the issue of spam content, doesn’t quite have an answer. But Tamblyn emphasized in his article that the company wants to maintain a “Book Community First” viewpoint. The announcements from Draft2Digital and Barnes & Noble about their recent updates also emphasized their changes were made to protect the integrity of independent publishing while recognizing that AI use among authors is a spectrum.
In an earlier article on the impact of AI on the publishing industry, Austin offered authors and publishers a final piece of advice: Keep doing what you’ve always done.
Chelle Honiker
Tamblyn ends his article on a similar note, with a message that seems to sum up the response from several bookselling platforms in the wake of AI: “As booksellers, we must do our part to take care of authors and their works.”
Even with the challenges AI poses to the publishing world, the indie publishing industry seems to be keeping its authors top of mind.
This Week's Indie Author Magazine Articles
In August 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown, Theresa Goodrich got the call from her doctor that no one wants to receive. A routine mammogram had discovered a small lump, and a biopsy had confirmed it was breast cancer.
The next few months were filled with treatments, changes, and challenges—and Theresa wrote through it all. She shared regular updates on her social media and her travel blog, and she wrote her third nonfiction book while sitting through chemotherapy appointments. Cancer was the most difficult part of her life, but it was also “the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says. It was also just the start of her story; this next chapter is hers to write—and she’s encouraging others to do the same in their own lives.
Nicole Schroeder
Before a reader ever opens your story, your cover will invite them to come closer. A good cover conveys your story’s genre, tone, and key elements at a glance while also standing out enough to catch your audience’s eye. As part of her series on launching a new pen name in a year, IAM columnist Susan Odev explores the details that matter most when designing your book’s biggest marketing tool, plus how to find a designer who can bring your vision to life.
Susan Odev
Teachings from Indie Author Training
Webinar: “How to Publish, Print, and Prosper with Lulu"
The name Lulu has been around the indie author space for many years, but how can you use the platform to get the most bang for your buck now?
Chelsea Bennett, host of Lulu University and author of Get Published, joined us to walk through exactly how to do that. She showcased Lulu's suite of tools and resources that can help you create beautiful, high-quality books while growing your business and bank account.
Watch the webinar at https://webinars.indieauthortraining.com/talks/how-to-publish-print-and-prosper-with-lulu/, then ask your questions and keep the discussion going in the field beneath the video.
More Indie Publishing News
Here’s a look beyond our pages at the latest headlines and happenings in the publishing world.
- Earlier this week, Writer Beware published a new article with tips for spotting email scams that target authors and publishers. As email scams have continued to evolve in recent months, recognizing them has become more of a challenge—but author Victoria Strauss has compiled a list of common email addresses and other details used by scammers for authors to reference when determining whether an offer is one to trust. Read the article here: https://writerbeware.blog/2026/06/30/the-first-clue-to-an-email-scam-may-be-the-address/.
- Simon & Schuster announced earlier this week that it would relaunch its Pocket Books imprint with a focus on signing self-published authors to print deals with the company. Pocket Books was the publishing company’s primary mass market paperback publisher until earlier this year, though the imprint won’t revive the mass market paperback format. Instead, it will publish books in a standard trade paperback size and carry traditional trade paperback pricing, as well as make use of traditional publishing's range of distribution channels. Read the Publishers Weekly article here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/100756-pocket-books-relaunched-as-home-for-self-published-authors.html.
Anything we’ve missed that you think we should cover? Any topics or questions you’d like our team to explore? Let us know at feedback@indieauthormagazine.com. Your suggestion may just make it into an upcoming article.
